By Colin Kellaher
Shares of Nuance Communications Inc. rose more than 20% in premarket trading Monday after Bloomberg reported that Microsoft Corp. is near a deal to buy the artificial-intelligence company for about $16 billion.
The Redmond, Wash., technology giant could announce as early as Monday an agreement to buy Burlington, Mass.-based Nuance for about $56 a share, Bloomberg reports, citing familiar with the matter.
That would represent a roughly 23% premium to Friday's closing price of $45.58 for Nuance and is above the stock's 52-week high of $51.62 reached in February.
Nuance shares were recently up 21.6% to $55.44 in premarket trading, while Microsoft shares edged up less than 1%.
Write to Colin Kellaher at colin.kellaher@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
04-12-21 0612ET